This little chair of mine, I'm gonna let it shine

Usually removing fabric from a chair is the most difficult and time consuming process of upholstery. Last night, in an effort to make up for our missed upholstery class due to the snow day, I decided to start working on this dreaded process.

And wouldn’t you know that there I was watching Glee and basically removing the fabric sans tools! It practically fell off the chair into my hands and I only used my tack removed about half the time.  I only took a brief break to shed a few tears (some would say I sobbed . . . ) when Will and Sue were singing ‘This Little Light of Mine’ at the Children’s Hospital. But the whole process took less than 2 hours. That’s a fabric-removal record for me (I’m still not completely done though . . . ).

Luckily I had a mask on during the process because not only was the fabric coming off easily; it was disintegrating with every touch and dust was everywhere. After the fabric came off, I tackled some of the stuffing – mainly horse hair and hay. I thought about keeping some of the horse hair and trying to clean it (it’s the best chair stuffing you can get and is extremely expensive to buy new) but it was just too old and matted.

Then I tackled the springs in the seat of the chair – also pretty disastrous. I’m not quite finished – we’ll have to remove the burlap and springs from the back of the chair tonight and finish removing all those little nails, but then she’ll be ready to be renewed.

I’m slightly concerned about the quality of the wood at the moment (chunks of it were breaking off during fabric removal) and I know that refinishing wood is not part of our class. I’m hoping it’s in decent enough shape to at least reapply springs, padding, fabric, etc., even if it never ends up being the sturdiest of chairs.

The hard thing about this piece is that it actually has some meaning and sentimental value. If it was a random chair off the side of the road, and I ended up accidentally completely destroying it, I wouldn’t feel so bad. With this chair, there were some cringe-worthy moments as I pulled off the fabric. In all honesty, the fabric wasn’t in terrible condition and wasn’t all that ugly, so it still made for a nice accent chair. I just hope I didn’t just destroy it.

I’m starting to doubt my abilities on this one, but at least I’ll have an expert teacher to help along the way.